Page 111 - Art Review

Beth Laurin Provisorium

Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, Stockholm 16 September – 3 December

The wall text of Beth Laurin’s exhibition commodities circulate (almost) without was realised in 1978 on the concrete rooftop
Provisorium bears a handwritten correction. In impediments. On the other hand – adding to of Kulturhuset, an astonishingly ordered
the space between ‘systematically’ and ‘investi- the list of poles between which Laurin’s works space surveilled by cameras: here, Laurin
gate’ of Axel Wieder’s curatorial introduction sway – fragmentation has also been a feminist introduced several rose-pink organic forms
describing (in Swedish) her ‘way to systemati- strategy to voice discontent with universalising that seemed to emerge from the tiles. The
cally investigate the question of what can be finalisms. The exhibition makes me think of shapes resembled scaled-up labia, blowing up
done with art’, the artist inserted the words Virginia Woolf’s The Waves (1931), in which such the lacunae of public space (and life) with
‘and intuitively’. This daub suspends closure, continuous shifts take place between attention intimate body parts in an otherwise ‘orderly’
turning the statement itself pointedly provisory. being directed inward and outward, while surrounding. I wish documentation of this
The exhibition comprises floor-based the dispersed form of the novel alludes to installation had been included in the exhibi-
sculptures, photographs, drawings, collages the fragmentary form of life itself. tion, as public sculpture and its defiance are
made from magazine snippets and vitrines with Provisorium includes a model of Del I (Part 1) integral to Laurin’s oeuvre.
assemblages of paraphernalia the artist collected (1976), a section of a bent pillar with sculpted Laurin’s proximity to Fluxus via contact
over the years. Among these is Objekt (1984), creases marring its smooth white surface. with Alison Knowles, among others, is evinced
joining newspaper-wrapped bottles, porcelain The classical ideal of the monolithic column, through systems she employs and simul-
shoes and wooden debris found durable and flawless, is humorously undercut taneously challenges. The exhibition includes
on a beach, among other items. Many objects with wrinkles, markers of the imperfect human photocopied letters to the artist Magnús
occur more than once: Relief (1985), an enlarged body. This work, a recurring form in Laurin’s Pálsson, expounding the plan of writing
polyester sculpture covered with gold leaf practice, was first exhibited at Nybroplan to him every day while contemplating if the
leaning against the back wall finds its lifesize square in Stockholm; then the artist covered correspondence will become art or remain
model – a found ice-cream-cone paper – in one the white fibreglass in greenish hues emulating ‘just’ life. Already on day three, Laurin didn’t
of the vitrines. Laurin’s oeuvre, the exhibition bronze, the archetypical material of public art. have time to write. Another interruption
makes clear, is one of tentative translations A similar metamorphosis takes place in Nr 1 à la Lee Lozano is exhibited as photographs.
between materials, scales and contexts. and Nr 4 (1995–96). These are meticulous pencil In 1979 Laurin cleared out her studio and had
What we see at Index oscillates between drawings of magnified paint smudges, the all of her works driven to a dumpster. Initially
process and object, abstraction and figuration, perfunctory originals of which, Färg avtorkad intended as a break from art to work in the
art and life. Here, coherence surfaces in the från pekfingret (Paint wiped off from the index finger, health sector, the documentation later turned
persistence on the fragmentary. Laurin’s ‘heaps 1995), are also shown. into the series Den 15 november 1979 (1979),
of fragments’, to use Fredric Jameson’s phrase My favourite piece in the exhibition is when Laurin resumed making art. The
concerning postmodernism, negotiate personal a smallscale pencil sketch for one of Laurin’s exhibition highlights the interim that is life
life experiences, but also point to what Jameson key works, titled Vad händer med Terrassen? (and art), convincingly suggesting, as one
saw as the decentred dismantling of social (What is happening with the terrace?, 1977), oddly of the collages reads, that ‘Disorder gives
life in late capitalism, in which images and tucked away in a corner. The finished version the dead life’. Stefanie Hessler

Sketch for Vad händer med Terrassen? (What is happening with the terrace?),
1977, pencil on paper. Courtesy the artist

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